


Passing

by orchidbreezefc



Category: Marvel 616, X-Men (Comicverse)
Genre: Angst, Canon Disabled Character, Gen, Prosthetics
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-30
Updated: 2015-08-30
Packaged: 2018-04-18 01:12:53
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 329
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4686689
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orchidbreezefc/pseuds/orchidbreezefc
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A reflection on Julian's various prosthetics.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Passing

**Author's Note:**

> This was originally a headcanon post, but then a style twist got in there, and now it's a ficlet, I guess. I mean, I've seen shorter on Ao3, so why not?
> 
> Tumblr mirror (including some very sweet retags) [here](http://orchidbreezefc.tumblr.com/post/127842661810/).

Julian Keller has many pairs of hands. The one benefit of losing his own is that now he can customize.

He has red gauntlets, to go with his uniform. He has the regular robotic ones by Forge, that he can line up alongside Nori’s gauntlets so that she grins because they match. 

He has a pair of god damn cat paws that smartass Alleyne sent as a gag gift one birthday, Julian doesn’t know where he gets off sending him a god damn birthday present but everyone was in on it, he kept getting madder and madder as his gifts turned out to include ears, a tail, a fucking collar, and the fucking god damn paws with little pink toe beans. 

Julian has a shelf in his closet just for hands, and sometimes as he picks the ones he wants for the day, he hesitates at a specific pair of hands in the back. 

McCoy is very proud of them. They’re molded from ballistics gel, which Julian knows from Mythbusters is as close as it gets to human flesh without killing anything. There are human bones in it, donated by Marrow. They’re matched to his skin color, they have nails, they even have his god damn fingerprints printed into them. They screw into a wrist attachment he can slather with adhesive and then stick them to the ends of his actual wrists, and no one would ever be able to tell they weren’t real without being told. 

A lot of times he takes them out and just looks at them. He looks at the mole on the left one, same place and shape as the one he had on his real hand. He thinks that if he wore these, he could look normal, with no floating things to give him away. He could look like he weren’t a mutant. His parents would have been delighted. 

He puts the hands back in his closet and never wears them even once.


End file.
